The present invention relates, in general, to a door impact beam.
The following discussion of related art is provided to assist the reader in understanding the advantages of the invention, and is not to be construed as an admission that this related art is prior art to this invention.
Door impact beams are used in motor vehicles as door reinforcement to protect occupants from injury in the event of an impact from the side, and are typically made of tubes or tubular cross sections, for example extrusion profiles or also press parts. Tubular cross sections have the drawback that in areas in which stress is less they generally have a same cross section as in those areas which encounter maximum stress. For that reason, tubular profiles have been oversized in some areas. To optimize weight, it is therefore required to subsequently cut the tubular cross sections to size, causing separate manufacturing steps. This in turn adversely affects manufacturing costs.
It would therefore be desirable and advantageous to provide an improved door impact beam which obviates prior art shortcomings and is simple in structure with optimum weight and which can be produced in a cost-efficient manner.